Update 12.13 Adds Labour statement

Malta has fewer than 4,000 unemployed people for the first time in 36 years, the Labour Party said today. 

It noted that unemployment stood at almost 8,000 when the party entered government in 2013.

The PL was reacting to new figures which showed that the number of unemployed people fell by 1,817 people in April this year when compared to April 2015.

Decreases in registered unemployment were recorded among all age groups. 

When compared to April last year, registrants for work decreased irrespective of how long they had been registering, the National Statistics Office said.  

The largest decrease was recorded among persons who had been registering for over one year. The number of persons with a disability who were registering for work also decreased by 61 to 358. Males accounted for 76.5 per cent of total registrants with a disability.

The largest share of males on the unemployment register sought occupations as crafts and related trade workers (17 per cent) as well as clerical support workers (17 per cent), whereas their female counterparts mostly sought occupations as clerical support workers (30.2 per cent).

The registered unemployment rate in November 2015 stood at 2.7 per cent of the labour supply, (excluding part-time employment), and varied from 3.2 per cent among men to 1.8 per cent among women. 

"Ironically, those who left us with almost 8,000 unemployed used to say that 'Labour won't work," the PL statement continued. The Nationalist Party had used a billboard with the slogan - first used by the UK Tories in the 1970s - back in 2012.